This invention relates to methods and apparatus for laying turf and, in particular, to methods of and apparatus for forming the base on which turf is to be laid and is specifically adapted for forming bases on which previously washed turf can be laid.
The applicant has adopted and developed systems whereby turf can be grown and harvested, and the soil from the root zone of the turf can then be removed by washing, and subsequently this turf can be relocated on a growing medium which is preferably sand. It can, however, be a sand/soil mixture, sand/peat moss or even soil alone. For the purposes of this description, we shall refer to the medium as sand on the understanding that it can be any one of the above.
In preferred forms, the growing medium has a base including drainage, a thickness of sand located thereabove, and a further thickness of sand which has reinforcing material therein. This sand/reinforcing material can be referred to as a matrix.
We prefer to use, as a reinforcing material, plastic mesh elements such as those sold under the trade mark Netlon but other elements, including fibrous elements can be used. Some such elements are sold under the trade marks Turfgrids, Fibresand and Fibreturf.
A substantial difficulty of such systems has been to satisfactorily lay the upper, reinforced, layer of sand. When there is a mixture of same and the Netlon elements, if a machine which acts on the surface is used, this tends to distort the surface as the edges of some of the elements can be contacted by the blade and this will tend to force the elements and the surrounding sand out of their position in the ground. Further, if a grader type machine is being used, if part of an element is being moved, it will tend to carry the adjacent sand with it.